Satoshi Notebook | The Distortion of Utility Assets

The Distortion of Utility Assets

In our broken monetary system, utility assets have been forced to serve as stores of value, creating artificial scarcity and denying their true purpose to society.

The Great Distortion

A house should be a home. A company should produce goods and services. Land should be cultivated. Yet in our current system, these utility assets have been transformed into monetary instruments - a perversion of their fundamental purpose.

                        When BlackRock buys thousands of homes to store value rather than provide housing, when farmland sits unused as a speculative asset, when stocks trade at 100x earnings - we're witnessing the monetization of utility, and it's breaking society.
                    

The Natural Order

In a healthy economy, things that are useful should become more accessible over time, not less. Technology, innovation, and competition should drive down the real cost of utility assets, making them increasingly available to all.

                        • Houses should be for living in

                        • Stocks should represent productive businesses

                        • Land should be for farming or building

                        • Bonds should finance real economic activity

                        • Companies should focus on value creation

The Monetary Premium

Instead, our broken money has forced people to seek stores of value wherever they can find them. This creates an artificial premium on utility assets:

                        • Housing prices reflect monetary premium, not real shelter value

                        • Stock prices reflect inflation hedge, not business fundamentals

                        • Land prices reflect speculation, not productive potential

                        • Everything becomes an "investment vehicle" first, utility second

The Social Cost

This distortion creates severe social consequences:

                        • Young families can't afford homes

                        • Productive businesses can't acquire land

                        • Investment flows to speculation instead of innovation

                        • Essential resources sit idle as "stores of value"

                        • Wealth inequality accelerates as assets appreciate

The Flipped Script

We must understand a fundamental truth: utility assets SHOULD get cheaper over time. This is the natural order of human progress. When a hammer becomes more expensive year after year, something is wrong with the money, not the hammer.

                        The true measure of progress is utility becoming more accessible, not more expensive. We've confused monetary appreciation with value creation.
                    

The Path Forward

To fix this, we need to separate money's store of value function from utility assets. We need a monetary asset so superior at storing value that it allows utility assets to return to their natural role: serving human needs rather than preserving wealth.

Only then can houses become homes again, companies focus on creating value, and human progress resume its natural course of making useful things increasingly accessible to all.